No, impeachment was not “ruled out” by Boehner
I’ve seen the meme over and over and over on the right: stupid Boehner ruled out impeachment for Obama.
But as I see it, nothing of the sort was done, nor could it be done. Congress can’t waive its right to impeach, nor was Boehner trying to do that.
Remember the context: it was during the buildup to the 2014 Congressional election, and Democrats were saying that if the Republicans won control of both houses they would impeach Obama. It was in trying to counter that propaganda that Boehner said the following:
Talk of impeachment was cooked up by a White House desperate for something to rally Democrats ahead of November’s elections, House Speaker John A. Boehner said Tuesday, flatly ruling out any action on the controversial suggestion.
“We have no plans to impeach the president. We have no future plans,” Mr. Beohner said. “Listen, it’s all a scam started by Democrats at the White House.”
Democrats have acknowledged impeachment talk has been good for their fundraising, but also say there’s some fire behind all the smoke. On Tuesday, congressional Democrats circulated a list of GOP candidates and sitting lawmakers who have said they want to see President Obama be impeached.
So, as of July 2014 (the article’s dateline), the Republicans had no plans to impeach Obama, and no future plans to impeach Obama. Those are two non-statements meant to pacify the fears of imminent impeachment. They are neither promises nor sign-offs on making future plans someday.
That is separate, of course, from the question of whether Republicans would actually make those plans. We don’t know. But Boehner’s prior statements about it are evidence of absolutely nothing.
My opinion about what’s brewing now—and I’m sure many of you may disagree—is that the Republicans would consider impeachment/conviction if they thought enough Democrats would join them. Right now, they just don’t have the votes. They will not impeach Obama unless they think they can win a conviction, and I think that’s wise.
I actually think there’s a small chance that Obama’s actions on Iran could force their hand, depending on what he does and how awful it is. How likely do I think it is that enough Democrats would turn on Obama, and that the Republicans would then act? Highly unlikely.
But it has not been ruled out.
Republicans would absolutely call for impeachment if they thought enough Democrats would join them to convict. They know that will not happen unless the very survival of the democrat party depends upon an impeachment and conviction.
It would indeed be highly counter-productive to impeach Obama only to fail to convict in the Senate.
Once military force is ruled out, only delaying the Iranian’s pursuit of nukes may be accomplished. In return for a promise, Obama, congressional democrats, the Left and the MSM are willing to chance the facilitation of that pursuit.
The brutal truth is that Congressional democrats are willing to risk millions of innocent American lives, so as to ‘give peace a chance’.
There will be no impeachment, let alone conviction, with the msm propaganda machine on his side and millions of easily swayed voters.
Repeat after me: Joe. Biden. Joe. Biden. Joe. Biden…
Impeachment still sounding peachy keen?
BillR:
Yes.
I think you fail to understand how dangerous Obama is. He is far more dangerous and far more successful in his dangerousness than Biden would ever be.
So yes.
And “peachy keen” is not what I think impeachment is. I think, however, that it’s absolutely necessary.
Boehner is acknowledged to be a *drinker*. As far as I am concerned he is addle brained because of it.
I agree with you Neo, Biden would provide some much needed comic relief at this stage. He is more traditionally educated & at least, perhaps, has a modicum of Patriotism
in his befuddled thinking.
Obama & Kerry are tweedle dum tweedle dee, & I read somewhere that Kerry has an Iranian son in law !
Molly NH:
I’m curious. If Boehner is addle-brained (either from drinking or from something else), how did he get to be Speaker? As far as I know, whether you agree with him or nor, or like him or not, or think he’s ethical or not, it takes a lot of wiliness, maneuvering, and jockeying for position and power to get to that point. I don’t think the addle-brained get there.
The dems have just had a little demo of what can happen to you if you go against the party. Menendez is a lesson. Who’s gonna want to take the chance of being purged? The party is consolidating power and getting leaner and meaner. Dead weight and mavericks will not be tolerated. I will have great respect for any dem who votes for impeachment. But that will give me even greater respect for our Constitutional system. Will show the sheer genius of the men who founded this country.
In chicago the machine can make you or break you. bho learned how to destroy or corrupt as is necessary. They got to Roberts, they can get to anyone.
It takes Time for alcoholic addle brain to kick in neo, hasn t he been there for eons ? He knows where all the skeletons are buried amongst the Dems & Repubs.
The man weeps at the drop of a hat, thats a bit weird, not so much for women, but men??
And just recently there was a pic floating around of him really
trying to *smack the make* (to use an expression from my youth) on Nancy Pelosi, it rivaled Biden in creepiness !
And finally may be he is just *First Amongst Idiots*
I don’t think the word “impeachment” is wise to even ention until and unless we get a large of the hitherto feckless and “white guilt”-driven public to pay attention and muster the level of indignation and outrage some of us on this blog take for granted and regard as only common sense. The masses, however, are disinterested in Iran unless Iran does something that kills a pile of Americans. No one is frightened yet. They’re just NOT. They don’t care because they don’t think it’s important to care and why get riled up on the side of Republicans over some insubstantial legalism or debating point. They don’t understand and they don’t want to. They don’t care. “Make me.” The mullahs in Iran understand this very well. They follow MSM coverage in America more closely than the vast majority of Americans, who are indifferent until forced not to be. They can get riled up quickly, but something will have to happen that’s undeniable. UNDENIABLE. All wars now are propaganda wars. They have been for a while.
Molly NH:
He may be an alcoholic and he may be weird, but I repeat that it takes smarts and savvy to get that position and hold it.
I’ve noticed that people often think politicians are stupid (your comment “first among idiots” is another example of that). Whether it be Democrats thinking a Republican is stupid who is not the least bit stupid (Reagan, Bush II), or Republicans thinking a Democrat is stupid who is not the least bit stupid (Obama), or Republicans or conservatives thinking a Republican is stupid (Boehner), it is a phenomenon I think is dangerous.
miklos000rosza:
A few of my liberal friends have expressed concern to me about the Iran/Israel situation lately. These are Obama voters. One is Jewish, the two or three others are not. They seem very troubled; they seem to care. No one else has mentioned it, and I haven’t asked them. Do they not care? I have no idea. But it seems to me that some people are fairly energized about this. Almost certainly not to the point of supporting impeachment, but I can imagine that it’s possible (possible, not probable) that if things get worse they would support it.
I’m not sitting on a hot stove till that happens, though.
For the general commentariat:
1) MOST top politicians are pretty heavy drinkers. The list of top ranked American politicians known to have a massive thirst goes on forever, and ever.
In vino veritas
2) A LOT of deal making HAS to occur when the ‘edge is off.’
Famously, Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan would tipple after hours.
3) Churchill, Grant, Andrew Jackson, et. al. notable drinkers…
Adolf Hitler — vegetarian (founding member of PETA) and a teetotaller — also famous for his flatulence and drug addictions — stands as a warning marker for the ages.
Wilson and Nixon were also famously ‘dry.’ The fascistic impulses of both are sobering.
&&&&&&&&&
You don’t want a ‘dry’ politician — and you don’t want an alcoholic.
As for ayatollah Soetoro: tobacco and cannabis seem to be his ‘thing.’ I rather doubt he’s able to kick either habit. His extremely visible chomping on Nicorette has made world headlines.
&&&
As for HRC — she’s an alcoholic — no doubt.
She needs it to tone down her inner child. A rage within needs some medication, for sure.
Her heavy drinking shows up in her inability to speak — well — when extemporaneous. Instead, we’re fed chronic Left-speak.
HRC’s inner rage pops out with: “…what difference does it make?”
An utterance that betrays her immense narcissism, for she uttered it because that trail of tears (Benghazigate) would wash her out of a presidential run.
This last point is also tied into the e-mail super-scandal.
Only a little more than 21 months to go, but I’m afraid it’s going to seem like 21 years. He (and the rest of the gang) have plenty of time to do more. It’s a shame that most people just don’t see the harm that’s being done. Or care.
I watched that movie, Unbroken, last weekend and marveled at several things it demonstrated:
(1) How young our warriors were during WWII (e.g. officers in their early 20s commanding men and flying insanely dangerous missions).
(2) The amazing maturity of these 20 year old men compared to our 20-somethings. These boys became incredibly mature men. I want to believe that the current generation would (could?) do the same, but frankly it’s hard for me to imagine.
(3) The unity of the American people. We were indeed still “a people” in those days, with a firmly held set of common beliefs, mores and folkways. No more, and probably never again. There is no longer a real national consensus about anything. We had one at the end there with Nixon, but it’s a political impossibility now. Too much polarization. Too much tribalism.
Neo being an idiot does not necessarily make you stupid.
I never said these pols were stupid.
Idiots ???? Sure, take this Indiana law, the idiot Conn Gov
dosen t even know his state has a very similar law there now.
Ditto most of the other Congress critters they passed a similar law & Slick Willy signed it & none of those grousing now seem to remember. If you don t consider lapses of memory like that
proof of their idiocy, then your bar is set pretty low.
Neo, re: those liberal Obama voters who expressed concern to you
about the Iran/Israel situation, how did you restrain yourself
from grabbing their shoulders & shaking them along with a good dose of, “What do you think I ve been talking about ???”
Sigh when I hear about people that are just so disengaged
I feel as though we are looking at future Alzheimer sufferers.
You know research says the plaques & tangles are forming in the brain 10 years before any symptoms are noticed.
Idiocy, stupid, hubris, traitorous, yadda yadda… what difference at this point does it make? We are on caca creek with no paddle and there be many alligators. Think about how to protect you and your kith. Bad moon rising. Hunker down, stay cocked and locked.
neo neo-con,
I’m glad to hear about your concerned friends. The only people I know these days are either in show-biz or the literary world, and it’s gotten to the point where I just don’t ever discuss current events in either America or the rest of the world with any of them. Most know I strongly dislike Obama, but we don’t into details and I get somewhat of a free pass because of the victim status engendered by the fact that I have MS.
I recently read Mark Bowden’s book GUESTS OF THE AYATOLLAH, which I didn’t expect to get much out of beyond a certain semi-masochistic level of research, but it’s worth reading right now.
The “Iran Hostage Crisis,” as it’s generally referrred to over here, over THERE is considered, unambiguously, an America military defeat. Do many Americans know, or care, that the hostages were frequently beat up during their 444 days of captivity? Beaten, subjected to any number of mock-executions, some kept in solitary confinement the whole time, often scarcely fed — many of the prisoners lost 20-30 pounds.
Why Jimmy Carter did not respond to an Act of War by Iran by declaring War in return is a question never adequately asked or explained. Oh, he was afraid of losing a single life. Wow. That’s some Commander-in-Chief.
Why Reagan did not punish the Iranian state after he took office remains a mystery as well.
This was when the hatred of America as “the Great Satan” began among Muslims, whether Shiites or Sunnis. This was when Westernized Arab females were bullied into wearing the hijab.
There’s a lot to say about how this all developed, how Secular Humanism’s intense self-criticism has ultimately become suicidal, and little has ever been said or acknowledged about the forgotten but powerful role Michel Foucault had in all this, as a supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini and as the most powerful voice in Western philosophy before he in effect killed it off, leaving space open for Queer Theory and Radical Feminism to then fill.
I’ve always maintained that Foucault, in his well-known proclivity for S&M, found in Khomeini the perfect “master” of the psychic dungeon he joyfully inhabited those last few years (until he died of AIDS). Very very little of Foucault’s journalism from Le Monde and the like from this period has ever been translated into English, for fear of turning off American feminists who might find some of it excessivly “hard to swallow” (in a word).
Foucault didn’t give one flying fuck at a rolling donut where women were going to end under Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution. In fact, their oppression may have been for him a feature, not a bug.
Molly NH:
Oh, I think they remember, all right. It just suits their purposes to pretend not to remember.
Knaves rather than fools.
And by the way, Connecticut’s law is not the same as Indiana’s because Connecticut:
So how it would actually work is anyone’s guess, but the situation is different than in Indiana. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the governor of Connecticut isn’t a hypocrite; he is.
Neo, if they pretend not to know their OWN enacted laws then
they take US for idiots, sadly significant numbers of the electorate are, but not all of us. All we can do is call them on it
& expose them as much as possible, easier to do in the internet age, but looking back just most recently with the Indiana fiasco.
I happened to be listening to most of the MSM reports at the outset. None, none of these vermin (as Michael savage refers to them) even vaguely mentioned the LAW signed by Clinton. The whole deal was painted as sudden outrage against Indiana when
numerous other states have similar laws as do the Feds & sponsored by Shumer & Kennedy no less !
Hubris and nemesis have been the sole realistic hope of the non-Left for many years. Other than voting and talking amongst ourselves, there is not a lot we can do to oppose the successful, decades-long takeover of everything from the girl scouts and SPCA to the media and academia.
We have many gifted speakers on our behalf and are intellectually superior to the Left; there literally is no comparison because the Left has abandoned intellectual discourse (they won!).
But we are leaderless at the moment and who knows for how long.
So the hope is that the Left in general and BO in particular get caught Hitler-like overplaying their hand.
The irremovable, simultaneous “strength” and weakness of the Left (a trait shared by all those who have a criminal mentality) is to get away with what they can. The high self-esteem and sense of superiority common on the Left is based on the thrill of successfully calculating what they can get away with.
And based on their success these past decades, they “deserve” to be ecstatic.
The Iran thing really looks like historic betrayal, something no one has ever done before. One can imagine the immense pleasure and self-satisfaction BO derives from the betrayal.
Will he suffocate from his auto-erotic asphyxiation? As neo says, probably not.
But I look at one of the most destructive politicians we have, Charles Schumer, to take an example.
It is not out of the realm of possibility that a Schumer might see impeachment as a necessary act of self-preservation.
Will nemesis present itself in some undeniable catalyst? That could make all the difference.
More Obama voters would wake up if Obama was half as radical. But hes so radical and destructive that any disapproval must first come with the painful acknowledgement of just how unbelievably wrong they were about him.
Most will continue to double down and invent far out excuses rather than face what they’ve helped happen.
Molly, a father (RIP) of one of the guys I grew up with; WWII ace, UAL pilot, and then head of their pilot training, had a great phrase to describe the sort of people you are talking about:
Intellectual Idiots.
Physicsguy, I bet he ran into a fair amount of those. Alan Dershowicz would qualify & ditto to
Constitutional Law Prof Jonathan Turley, a few months ago HE was testifying before some committee THAT, there was Constitutional Crisis afoot with all the flagrant violations & ignoring of
considerations the Constitution requires. Then AMAZINGLY Turley ADMITS he voted for Obama
TWICE !!! Was he conducting some sort of experiment to see how far he could push things?
A New England radio guy Howie Carr has been saying for years how *strange* John Kerry is,
“he just has the worst possible instincts about people”. (SofS is another intellectual idiot) & HE is negotiating with the Mullahs !
As the Irish like to say, “saints preserve us”!
There is no doubt that Obama should be impeached and removed from office. There are dozens of reasons to do so. And yes a bumbling Biden would be much better then a serious Bolshevik.
The problem with Republicans/Conservatives is not that they are technically stupid, although practically they are, the problem is that they are weak, frightened and feckless.
Take this RFRA nonsense. What an incompetent fool Pence is. He wasn’t prepared to defend and fight back against a bill that the Gay Nazis no doubt would be interested in. And now as a good mainstream Republican he is caving. No Presidential run for Pence.
David French has a good post on NRO on this “It’s not that hard to survive a hatestorm”
http://tinyurl.com/mv22u3s
Molly NH:
Turley voted for Obama in 2008, but in 2012 he appears to have voted for the libertarian candidate.
Which in my book is pretty much a vote for Obama, but many on this blog wouldn’t see it that way.
I forget where I found that information, but it was when I was writing a previous post on Turley. Don’t have time to look for it now.
Molly NH:
They absolutely take the US voting public (or at least the majority of it) for idiots. So far the bet has paid off for them.
There’s good news and bad news for America. Obama, and the Progressive Left, is the bad news. In the time he has left he can do a lot of damage. But the more he steps outside his legal authority, the more he bares his teeth… and it’s possible that even Democrats and the MSM will notice that, well, President Precious has fangs, and there’s blood dripping from them, and there’s a trail of exsanguinated bodies rotting on the White House lawn that might be considered newsworthy. (I know, I know, dream on…)
But the really good news is that the Democrat party is out of ideas… and Presidential Candidates to “articulate” them. One glance at the Democrat bench confirms this ideological and personnel bankruptcy. Who is there behind Hillary? Biden? Warren? Cuomo? Webb? O’Malley? Republicans would be dancing in the streets.
And we should be at least a little bit pleased that in 2016, bereft of options, the stupid party will out of desperation be forced to nominate as their Presidential candidate an unlikable, untrustworthy, unaccomplished, uncharismatic, scandal-ridden old biddy who isn’t very good at campaigning to face off against… does it really matter? In spite of the MSM, and the money that will be flowing into Democrat coffers, any of a dozen Republicans with a pulse and a 1000 word vocabulary should be able to mop the floor with her. Please let it be so.
buddhahat:
At this point, the thing that worries me most about 2016 is the Republican propensity to destroy each other in bitter infighting, coupled with the conservative propensity to take its ball and go home (which is really a form of the same thing).
Plus the MSM will fixate on any miniscule incident & treat it like a total collapse, for the republicans.
While the Dems will be seen as the Party of Blissful Voices all being heard & listened to.
Neo: I agree completely. Reagan’s 11th Commandment should be tattooed on everyone’s forehead as soon as the primaries start. That’s why I’m looking at candidates that won’t sign up for the circular firing squad Republicans seem so fond of, and why, right now, Marco Rubio strikes me as the one candidate who seems to want to go after the stupid party and not his fellow conservatives. I get the sense he knows who he is and what he believes, which is why he can state his positions so forcefully and so gently at the same time.
That said, I will vote for a can of orange juice for President if there’s an R by its name.
Firing circle? If people accepted how much blackmail the Left has on Republican officials, they would see this firing circle as being more naturally instigated from outside the circle.